...and there is nothing worse than having to explain a joke. A little devil such as yourself would allow the comment to sit as a perceived insult than explain the cleverness of your quip. Am I right ?

dave

Have you noticed how you'll receive an English joke from someone - it'll be maybe two or three lines with a punchy catch line, you'll laugh and that will be that. A few days or weeks later you'll receive another joke from a German or Swiss colleague with a powerpoint attachment. You'll open it up and it will be the same joke only this time it's been enhanced with lot's of goofy graphics, really annoying letter-by-letter fly-in animation, garish colour schemes and somehow the humour has been removed? Happens a lot I believe

The powerpoint jokes seem to be a Swiss speciality. They have the market cornered :-P

I feel the need to differentiate between German and Swiss colleagues here. We English find toilet humour so amusing and I've found that the Swiss share this view (once the ice is broken i.e. after 4 or 5 years of being neighbours, colleagues, etc). Germans, on the other hand ... "insert Blackadder clip here ....".

You're absolutely right. The Germans also seem to find Mr Bean hysterical whereas many English find it to be the poorest humour from Rowan Atkinson

"You Englisch, viz your amusing toilet humour"

Why do the Germans always say "Wessels" and not vessels? Puzzles me that one as the "W" sound doesn't exist in Hochdeutsch

If I really want to annoy someone here, I just tell them I have a joke for them: "A woodpecker walks into a bar and asks 'Is the bar tender here?'"
Keeps them going for days. I also find it works well with stupid people back home, too. A good friend had an insufferable girlfriend who i once told that joke to. After three weeks, she finally cracked and asked her boyfriend what it meant. I did, however, get one of the best back-handed compliments from her. I walked into the pub and I heard her say 'Oh, not him - I get headaches when I talk to him'.

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New book out now: European Bird Names: A Translation Guide.
www.tonykeenebirds,co,uk - photos, paintings and drawings of Swiss, Australian, NZ and British birds

A good alternative to that joke is:

Two parrots on a perch and one says to the other, "Can you smell fish?"

Or my all time favourite:

Two cannibals eating a clown and one says to the other, "Does this taste funny to you?"

Neither are suitable for a quick laugh outside of an English speaking land...

I don't know where to post this, but had to say it. Came across the weirdest wibble in my time here this afternoon. Normally, wibbles can amuse me, but this one was definitely missing from a cell somewhere. A padded, possibly soundproof, cell.
On the no. 13 bus into Bern (which has more than it's fair share of strange people anyway), a rather beefy woman climbed on and instantly started hissing and making weird noises at a black family and shooing motions at them. A mediterranean-looking chap climbed on and got the same treatment. So did we when she heard us talking in English. She got really p***ed off when Mk.2 infant started crying, so she started hissing at her. I thought 'one more step this way and you're in an armlock waiting for the coppers...' when she moved towards us, but luckily, it was our stop. I left her with a cheery 'Don't run under a bus now.'
So anyhoo, the kids are playing in the fountains at Bundesplatz and she's there again, making the rounds of anyone who was even lightly tanned.
Class 1, export grade wibble.

__________________
New book out now: European Bird Names: A Translation Guide.
www.tonykeenebirds,co,uk - photos, paintings and drawings of Swiss, Australian, NZ and British birds

sadly true. thats why i have switched off, depluggd my telly from the cable. the shows we have on are crap and this also is manifested in mr.bean.

Fun article of a jaywalker in Atlanta

Probably the only places in Zurich where jaywalking should be penalised is around HB, Bellevue, Stauffacher and Uraniastrasse/Bahnhofstrasse. Pedestrians there behave like they got a free lobotomy with their breakfast cereal.